'I'm A Brotha, But Sometimes I Don't Feel Black': Race, Technology and the Risky Black Masculine (Top Paper).

This paper will address two separate but linked contradictory phenomena within the greater discursive universe of hiphop culture, non-normative masculinity and black technological identity, or the ‘thug-nerd’. First, I aim to explore a particular instance of a self-avowed, overdetermined performance of the black geek in the work of the artist Fatlip. Second, I examine the links between music technology and black identity through an analysis of the black producer whose relationship to complex musical technologies is often masked, elided or reconfigured under broader assumptions of either black technophobia or an anti-intellectual hypermasculinity. Here the thug-nerd indicates the degree to which black technological identity is structured not through references to normative white or Asian constructions of the techno-geek, but rather re-presents a long alternative history of black engagements with technology. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]